heel malfunction

As you know, I don’t need the help of heels to fall-over and scrape my knee, uppity curbs are sufficient, it is a wendy-way of being…

Sophie King received £7,200 compensation for ‘pain, suffering and loss of amenity’ due to a broken ankle resulting from a fall when the heel of her newly purchased shoe broke. The Guardian’s Ariane Sherine thinks Sophie deserved a broken ankle and should repay the damages. At least one fledgeling member of the UK caring(?), medical, profession agrees with Ariane’s view that women should expect to suffer pain for conforming to patriarchal, consumerist, pressures to wear sub-standard dangerous products, in this case, high-heeled shoes. Both the Guardian and medical blog point out that Sophie, the victim, was 5 ft 9. The sheer audacity to be a girl AND tall without recognising that she expected to suffer substandard, dangerous goods, while maintaining her social obligation to conform to patriarchal ‘sexy’ values.

This is a classic example of the patriarchal approach to dealing with systematic abuse against women by requiring an adjustment to the behaviour of the victim rather than the perpetrator of the crime. Legally referred to as ‘contributorynegligence’ , infamously called-out in 1980’s UK when a man convicted of rape was not given even a custodial sentence by Judge pickles because the woman (victim) was negligent in her behaviour by wearing a mini-skirt. Huh?!

I’m glad that this time, the legal system protected the victim, Sophie King.

Shoe manufacturers systematically target physically-dangerous (high-heeled) shoes at women, not men. It is a clear case of female-gender abuse. A trap targeted only at female health. On planet Wendy an insightful, talented, lawyer would bring a class action against the shoe industry for being the instrument of perpetrating systematic violence against women.

This scribble was published
on Saturday, July 19th, 2008.
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